I’m Princess Marzipan!
Hello! This is a little sort of a scrap book I’ve put together to introduce myself in case you’ve never met me before. And if you haven’t, how do you do? I do lots of writing, and this is some little bits from my books and other things that I’ve put together so you can see what I’m like. Actually, I’ll tell you what I’m like - I’m WONDERFUL! But of course, you’ll want to see for yourself, won’t you?
I’ll start with the beginning of my first book....
1: Me, me, me!!!
Today, I am going to start writing about myself. If nobody else is going to, then I don’t see why I shouldn’t. I shall begin by saying that I am almost beautiful. I say almost because I know I will be really, really beautiful when I am a few years older, so for the moment I must be just almost beautiful and that’s good enough for me.
Did I tell you my name? It’s Princess Marzipan. All right, everybody can laugh now and we’ll get it out of the way. Don’t blame me for having such a ridiculous name. My father thought of it. He’s the King of Mountcastle, of course, and one day I will be the Queen, so you’d better remember that and not make too much fun of me now in case I should decide to chop your head off when I’m older.
Anyway, I’ve already decided that nobody in Mountcastle will be allowed to read this book and anyone found reading it will most definitely have his head cut off and stuck on one of those big spikes up on the castle battlements. When I get to the end of this book, I will put it in a basket and attach it to a balloon so that it can fly far away to another land or even another world altogether where the people can read everything about who I am and what I do and how wonderful it is to be a Princess.
Well, most of the time it’s wonderful, but sometimes it’s not! I’ll tell you about some of those times later! Usually, I have a lot of fun living in Mountcastle, and I have lots of friends and I love all my family very much even though they sometimes get on my nerves or shout at me. I can’t blame them really, because I’m not very good all of the time...though I never really mean to be bad. Anyway, who’s good all of the time? I bet you’re not!
Shall I tell you what I do sometimes, maybe on a wet day when I have to stay inside the castle? I imagine I’ve got a secret friend that nobody else can share who can have adventures with me. Maybe you can be my secret friend? I won’t tell anyone else, promise!
Phew! I’ve written a whole page! My hand is falling off! I wish someone would invent a machine that writes things for you. Maybe they already have them where you come from. So now I’ve started on my book! It’s a nice big thick book with a pink cover, and it will be even nicer when I’ve filled it with stories about me! I promise I will tell you everything that happens to me from now on, whether it’s good or bad and that I won’t change anything or make up things that make me sound better than I really am. In any case, I’m so good you couldn’t invent anything better!
* * *
Well, I’d better get on with writing this story! Where do you want me to start? I think the beginning would be a good place, don’t you? I hate those silly old fashioned stories that start ‘once upon a time there lived a little girl called so and so...’ There are lots of books like that in the Mountcastle library, and I want mine to be different, so I won’t start it like that! Anyway, those kind of books are all made-up fairy stories and everything in my book is true!
I’ve lived in Mountcastle since I was born which feels like forever and probably is, really, if you’re me. In fact it was nine years ago, but I’m very nearly TEN! In fact it will be my birthday in a few weeks, so I’ll tell you when it happens! You can come to my party too!
I suppose you’ll want to know what I look like, especially if you’re going to be my secret friend. I’ll just have to imagine what YOU look like, though, but it’s all right because my teacher says I have a very vivid imagination!
I already mentioned that I’m beautiful, didn’t I? Well, almost beautiful, but you’ll want to know a bit more than that. So where should I start? At the top or at the bottom? At the top, I think, because you really don’t want to know about my bottom!
Right at the top of me, then, is my hair. And very nice hair it is too, not golden as you might expect, but a sort of purply brown if you can imagine such a colour. Beneath that come my eyebrows, which are a bit bigger than I’d like and rather hairy. But my eyes more than make up for that because they’re big and bright and a dazzling shade of emerald green, just like two big jewels as my father the King always tells me.
Next comes my nose. This is thin and almost exactly the right length. Perhaps it is a little bit longer than it ought to be, but when the rest of my face has caught up it will be a beautiful thing indeed. Of course nothing will ever be as beautiful as my strawberry red lips, which were made to do just two things. One is sucking lollipops and the other is kissing handsome Princes. Guess which I’ve done the most of? Right first time. Here in Mountcastle we don’t have a lot of handsome Princes. We have lots of lollipops, though, which leads me on to the next bit of me I have to describe - my teeth. These are not really very good. At least that’s what the Castle Dentist always tells me. He keeps wanting to fix bits of wire around them and is always prodding them with nasty sharp bits of metal and tut-tutting and telling me to suck fewer lollipops. “Find me some handsome Princes then,” I tell him. Some hope!
To finish with, here’s a little bit about me and some of the other people you’ll meet in my stories:
All About ME, by Princess Marzipan
Right, so what do you want to know? Boring things like how old I am and how tall I am and what colour are my eyes and hair, yawn yawn?
How old am I? Well, I’m an amazing TEN years old! Almost. In fact I’m so ALMOST ten it’s hardly worth mentioning that I’m nine because I’ll only have to come back and change what I’ve written later.
When’s my birthday? Why, are you going to send me a card? A present would be nice, too. It’s April 11th*, so DON’T FORGET!!
How tall am I? Four feet six inches - that’s without my shoes or my crown and not standing on tiptoe or trying to cheat, honest.
What do I most enjoy doing? Well, apart from having adventures I like riding my bicycle. He’s very old and very rusty and his name’s P-percy (he’s called that because it says ‘PPER’ on the side of him. He was built over a thousand years ago in a time called the ‘nineteen seventies’ whenever that was...*)
* I must just tell you here about our months and our days of the week in case they’re different to yours. We have ten months in every year, all thirty days long, then we have a special 6 day festival called Mountcastle Festival at the end of the year that isn’t part of any month, where people buy each other presents and cards and have lots and lots to eat and drink.
We have seven days in the week, and they are: Sunny, Muddy, Juicy, Windy, Thirsty, Farty and Splatterday. Silly names, aren’t they? I don’t know where they come from, but Kindling says they used to be different and got changed over the centuries.
Our months are probably the same as yours: Janitory, Febrewery, Marz, April, May, Dune, Julie, Octumber, Nowonder and Distemper.
The year is 716 according to our calendar, which is probably different from yours. Mine is pink with ribbons on the bottom and a picture of a bunny rabbit on the top.
Who are the other members of my family?
Well, my father is King Rudolph, the ruler of Mountcastle. He’s very fat and rather jolly and sings and plays music and grows yellow roses in the Mountcastle gardens. I think he’s probably a good king because he doesn’t start wars or throw people in dungeons or do lots of the other horrible things that some other kings have done.
My mum is Queen Phyllida, who is probably as beautiful as I shall be one day, even though she’s VERY old - over thirty years old! She’s nice, but she gets a bit cross with me sometimes when I don’t do as I’m told. Actually, I ALWAYS do as I’m told, so I don’t know what she finds to get cross about.
I’ve got a brother and sister, too. My brother, Prince Jelly, is older than me (but not as clever, even if he thinks he is). He’s always reading books and telling you things that you don’t need to know like how much the moon weighs. Well, if the moon’s worried about getting fat, I suppose that kind of thing MIGHT be useful to know! My sister is called Princess Candyfloss. She’s fat and cries a lot and is almost totally useless.
A lot of our other relatives also live in the castle, but if I listed all my millions of aunts and uncles and what have you I’d be here all night. The most interesting person in Mountcastle apart from me is probably our Jester, Kindling. He’s funny (well, he’d have to be if he’s a jester) and he can dance and sing and play all kinds of musical instruments. I have some adventures with him because he’s kind and patient and doesn’t tell me to shut up when I go on and on and shout at him like I do sometimes.
As well as Kindling, another quite interesting person is Mr. Threadneedle. He’s a sort of inventor and explorer who’s very interested in the ancient history of the earth (around the time that you probably live in). He often digs old things out of the ground and makes them work again - my bicycle, P-percy was one of them - he didn’t even know what it was for when he found it!
Well, I think that’s QUITE enough! If you want any more, you’ll have to read my books when they come out, won’t you! By the way, do you think I write nicely? I don’t use too many exclamation marks, do I? Or capital letters? Miss Prism, my teacher, thinks I do. WELL I DON’T, SO THERE!!!! I hope you enjoyed reading about me - I certainly did!
Love,
Marzipan
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